May marks the 25th anniversary of “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.” In gearing up for this milestone, there has already been a slew of interviews with the cast and crew about making the film. However, one actor has remained silent about the film, young Anakin Skywalker himself, Jake Lloyd.
Most fans believe that the onslaught of negative press about Lloyd in “The Phantom Menace” caused him to leave acting altogether. But his mother, Lisa Lloyd, is trying to set the record straight about why her son seemingly vanished from the public eye. Surprisingly, it had little to do with overzealous fans who thought it was okay to bully a child.
“People say he quit because of ‘Star Wars.’ Well, that’s not true. It didn’t have anything to do with ‘Star Wars.’ It had more to do with our family. And we were going through a divorce,” Lisa explained. “Things were unsettled and kind of rough. And Jake didn’t seem to be having a lot of fun auditioning anymore.”
While many fans believe that Jake came to despise the franchise, his mother contends that is not true either. She claims that he still likes wearing “Star Wars” t-shirts he even started watching Disney+’s “Ahsoka” series. For his recent 35th birthday she gave him an action figure of the lead character.
“He loves all the new ‘Star Wars’ stuff,” she says. “People think Jake hates ‘Star Wars.’ He loves it.”
What Actually Happened
The real reason Jake quit acting was due to serious struggles with his mental health. Lisa, who has Jake’s consent to tell his story, started noticing changes around high school. While a teen’s personality altering is far from unheard of, Jake seemed to be struggling with reality itself.
“He started talking about ‘realities.’ He didn’t know if he was in this reality, or a different reality. I didn’t really know exactly what to say to that.” Once, when Lisa asked Jake to finish his homework; “And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t even know if I need to do it. I don’t know which reality I’m in,’” she explained. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re in my reality today, so you have to do your homework.’”
Initially, Jake was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but after running a gauntlet of different drugs nothing seemed to improve. Soon after he graduated from high school in 2007, and was accepted for Columbia College Chicago fall semester.
Unfortunately, his struggles with mental health only deepened. “He missed a lot of classes, and he was telling me that people were following him,” Lisa said. He also began seeing people with “black eyes” and thought he was having conversations with “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart through his TV.
“He didn’t tell us he was hearing voices at the time. But he was,” Lisa recalls. Jake left the college after a semester and a half to go back to living with his mother. After a battery of therapists and psychiatrists Jake was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
“When they finally told him, it totally threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa said. “It was really hard.”
The American Psychiatric Association uses the word schizophrenia as an umbrella term to describe disorders that include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and a lack of motivation. It has a horrible stigma, with many believing that schizophrenics are unhinged dangers to society. Although the World Health Organization says it affects 1 in 300 people or approximately 24 million worldwide. So clearly most schizophrenics aren’t out causing mayhem.
They also found out that Jake has a neurological condition called anosognosia which causes a patient to be unaware of, or unconsciously in denial, about their symptoms. “He didn’t think he needed to take medication because he wasn’t sick,” explains Lisa. “He didn’t think he needed to go to the therapist because there’s nothing wrong with him.”
This coupled with some medicines losing their effectiveness over time leads to a revolving door of different treatments. This caused Jake to sometimes opt to self-medicate with illicit drugs.
During this time in 2015, Jake was arrested by the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina. While on a solo road trip from Florida to Canada he lead police on a multi-county chase before crashing his car. While in jail he shut down and just refused to speak to his mother.
“I tried to call him and he wouldn’t talk to me. Just flat out refused,” she said. “I was talking to the people at the jail and trying to explain to them that he’s off his medication. But they wouldn’t give him his medication.”
While she petitioned to have him moved to a hospital there were no beds available. So Jake remained in jail for 10 months. “As a mom, you’re just pulling your hair out because your child needs help. You know that he’s sick. You know that he’s not going to get any better unless he gets some medication.”
But Lisa didn’t give up on her son, she continued to send notes and cards despite his lack of response. Once Jake began speaking to her again they were able to get him into a hospital before deciding to move to California from Indiana.
On top of all of this, Jake’s younger sister Madison (who was also an extra in “The Phantom Menace” ) passed away in 2018. She was only 26 years old.
“He just couldn’t handle it. He didn’t know how to process it,” Lisa said. “Sometimes he would just start saying that he really missed Madison. That’s about as much of a conversation as we’d have about it. “
In March of 2023, Jake suffered a full-blown psychotic break. While in the car with Lisa; “He said he wanted to turn the car off. And he turned the car off in the middle of the three lanes, and we were in the middle lane,” she remembers. “There was a lot of yelling and screaming.”
“The police got there, and they asked Jake some questions,” Lisa said. “He was talking to them, but none of it made sense. It was all word salad.” He was admitted to a hospital that same day.
The Hard Road To Recovery
Currently, Jake is 10 months into an 18-month stay and Lisa says he is already showing a marked improvement.
“He’s doing much better than I expected,” says Lisa. “He is relating to people better and becoming a little bit more social, which is really nice. It’s kind of like having more of the old Jake back, because he has always been incredibly social until he became schizophrenic.”
His mother maintains that the backlash from “The Phantom Menace” had little to nothing to do with the trajectory of Jake’s acting career.
“I protected him from the backlash. He was just riding his bike outside, playing with his friends. He didn’t know. He didn’t care,” she contends. “Everybody makes such a big deal about that. And it’s rather annoying to me because Jake was a little kid when that came out, and he didn’t really feel all that stuff because I didn’t let him online.”
While some kids in school did bully him, it was nowhere near as bad as almost 25 years’ worth of rumors have made it out to be.
As for him stepping away from Hollywood; “It would have happened anyway,” Lisa maintains. “I believe that it was genetic. And his psychiatrist also agrees that Jake was going to become schizophrenic.” Since schizophrenia does run on his biological father’s side of the family.
“Jake loved filming ‘Star Wars.’ He had so much fun,” she recalled. “I would love for him to get well enough to be able to do a little bit of something, and I’m sure he would maybe like to do that. He couldn’t at this point, but you never know how much he’s going to improve. So we’ll see.”
We wish Jake and Lisa all the best in his healing journey. You can catch all the “Star Wars” films on Disney+.
